


Ghost in the Hell’s Kitchen

by Neurocrat



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Hand Jobs, However if you have seen it it may help you cry harder, It's an episode of Black Mirror season 3, Kissing, M/M, No need to have seen San Junipero, Regret, San Junipero, Science Fiction, Slow Dancing, san junipero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 07:47:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13072377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurocrat/pseuds/Neurocrat
Summary: His heart pounded a bit, awash in a mix of feelings he didn’t know how to name, but he put on one of his patented cheery Foggy Nelson grins and stuck out his hand. “Foggy.”“Matt.” The man in red glasses shook his hand. Warm and strong. Matt got his beer and murmured a thanks. “Hey, I’m celebrating tonight. You want to do some shots with me, Foggy?”Foggy smiled into the dregs of his beer. “Sure, why not.” He did not ask what Matt was celebrating.





	Ghost in the Hell’s Kitchen

Foggy twisted the old, broken-down bar stool just to hear it creak and nursed his beer slowly. Something familiar played over the juke box, something that had been overplayed many years ago. He had come here for that, just that homey feeling of something from his past. The details, like the creaky bar stools, like the built-up filth in the cracks in the Formica counter. He traced his fingers along one of those cracks. They were good details.

He had not come here to meet people – after all, hardly anyone was here; this kind of bar wasn’t a fond memory for that many souls. In fact, of the dozen or so other patrons, he wondered how many of them were simulations. So he was surprised when a young man sauntered up and slid onto the stool next to him.

The man wore a smart suit, cut in a fashion Foggy remembered well, and a bright smile. “Hello, stranger,” he said, and Foggy nodded his head at the man warily, taking a gulp of beer. The man looked out of place in the dirty dive bar. His white teeth and red glasses caught what little light there was and reflected it at Foggy.

Foggy gestured to the grizzled, tattooed bartender for a beer for his friend. “I feel like there’s a line for this situation,” Foggy said to the man in the suit, “some old cliché about boys like you and places like this.”

The man in red glasses made a quiet laugh, as if to himself, as he folded up his cane. “It reminds me of home,” he answered.

“Me too, buddy,” Foggy said, “Me too. It’s been too long since I was home, really home.” His heart pounded a bit, awash in a mix of feelings he didn’t know how to name, but he put on one of his patented cheery Foggy Nelson grins and stuck out his hand. “Foggy.”

“Matt.” The man in red glasses shook his hand. Warm and strong. Matt got his beer and murmured a thanks. “Hey, I’m celebrating tonight. You want to do some shots with me, Foggy?”

Foggy smiled into the dregs of his beer. “Sure, why not.” He did not ask what Matt was celebrating.

\--

Two shots in, Foggy asked, “Hey - you could see here, if you wanted to, couldn’t you?”

Matt smiled and nodded, as if he got that question a lot. “Yeah. There’s no point in it for me, though. I’ve lived my whole life using my senses this way. This is the world to me.”

Foggy nodded. He personally couldn’t imagine choosing not to see, but he had spent his whole life with sight, unlike Matt. “Of course,” he said, “silly of me. You get everything you need. From your other senses.”

“I do,” Matt said, and placed his hand over Foggy’s on the bar for a moment, as if to sense Foggy through touch. He didn’t linger, but it was a gesture just out of place enough that it meant something. It had to.

Foggy gratefully swallowed down the next shot the bartender offered, and cleared his throat afterwards. “Uhm. Matt, I don’t suppose you’d wanna dance with me?”

Matt was dead still at first, and Foggy’s heart must have stopped. But then Matt turned those white teeth toward him, and his hand was on top of Foggy’s once again, curling under his fingers to take it off the bar. “I’d love to. C’mon. Let’s go pick out something on the juke box.”

It was the old-fashioned kind of juke box, with a carousel of actual discs that would slide out of their spots and into a disc player. Foggy had not seen a disc like that in the real world for some time. Matt seemed to have opinions about music, so Foggy let him lead. He had Foggy search for Merle Haggard in the listing, and directed Foggy to pick out a particular song.

Next thing Foggy knew, Matt’s strong arms arranged themselves gracefully around his neck, which answered his next question, regarding who was going to put their arms where. He’d even been half-forming a dumb joke about it, and now he had nothing to say, as he awkwardly placed his hands on Matt’s waist. A wonderfully muscled waist, of course. Foggy felt embarrassed heat come into his chest and neck. Matt couldn’t see him blush, but Matt would know.

“I didn’t peg you for a country fan,” Foggy said to him, trying to recover the littlest bit of the cool he never had in the first place.

Matt smiled. (Dimples - nice touch; he must have specifically requested them.) “I’ve picked up a few new interests, hanging around this place. I’ve had a lot of time.”

“Yeah, me too,” Foggy said. “Something I never had much of before.”

“Nobody did,” Matt said, close to Foggy’s ear, and rested his head on Foggy’s shoulder.

“Particularly not you, though,” Foggy whispered to him, a statement more than a question.

“Mm,” Matt said, and sighed in a melancholy way, as if regretting something. Foggy drew him closer, listening to the song lyrics, assimilating them into the message Matt may or may not be sending him.

By the end of the song, Matt was stroking Foggy’s hair with one hand, nuzzling his face into Foggy’s neck. Foggy did not know how many years it had been since he had been touched like this. Sure, when he’d first got to this place he had explored some of the newness, some of the options – there were so many options for bodily pleasure. But touched _like this._ By a person. Well, they were all simulacrums, in the end. But some of them had real people behind them. Real meat bodies, real wetware, somewhere out there, lying in their cocoons. Was Matt out there, tucked in a bed in some facility, some home for old bodies?

“I always loved long hair,” Matt crooned. Foggy was glad he’d opted for maximal silkiness in his avatar’s hair. It had just been for himself, for kicks, but it was paying off in a way he hadn’t exactly anticipated.

The last notes of the song wound down, and something poppier from a more recent era blasted out of the juke box, jarring them out of their embrace. “C’mon,” Foggy said, leading Matt by the wrist back toward the bar. “One more shot.”

The alcohol worked its magic in their bloodstreams, even if its actual delivery was into their arms through an intravenous line, not from the liquids they tasted. They loosened up more. Any notions Foggy may have had in his head that this was a bad idea got quieted down, like a heavy blanket was thrown over them. They tried to dance to another song, but ended up kissing instead. It felt just like real, maybe even realer than real. Matt’s lips so soft, the inside of his mouth so warm. His fashionable stubble (well, fashionable from back _then_ ) rough against Foggy’s face. Opening his eyes and peeking past Matt’s head for a second, Foggy saw the bartender raise her eyebrows at them, then just look back placidly at the glass she was wiping out. Nobody cared here. This place was for this, just this thing, returning to the past in whatever way the patrons chose. The good parts of the past and just as much the bad parts, the hopelessly mixed parts.

Matt’s hands were becoming insistent on Foggy’s body, fingering at his shirt where it was tucked into his pants, trying to get underneath. “How disgusting are the bathrooms in this place?” he panted against Foggy’s mouth.

Foggy chuckled. “They’re not bad. It’s all for show, anyway; there are no actual germs, of course.”

“Smells?”

“Don’t worry. They didn’t go in for that degree of realism, not in this bar.”

They retreated to a stall together. As they headed to the bathroom, some eyes of patrons followed them with mild interest, but nothing more. Matt tucked his glasses into his front pocket, sat on the toilet, and pulled Foggy onto his lap. Matt’s thighs were so firm it was almost uncomfortable to sit on them, but Foggy would stay there and make out with Matt all night if he could. He worked Matt’s tie out of its knot and started opening his shirt buttons, while Matt got under Foggy’s t-shirt finally, feeling him up. Foggy shivered at the feel of his fingers.

Matt drew in a breath, frowning a little at the feel of Foggy’s toned pecs, his relatively flat stomach. He smiled, but it seemed forced. “You’ve been, uh, working out,” he said, lightly.

Foggy snorted. “If by ‘working out’ you mean I took five seconds to make phenotype customizations, then, yup,” he replied. But something in Matt’s face, and the gentle way he explored Foggy’s flesh, was making him worried.

Matt’s mouth was open, trying to figure out how to say something that couldn’t be any good. “I, uh…” Foggy stiffened, feeling inadequate all at once. “Your body is… So nice. But, I kind of used to like, well…”

Foggy gripped Matt’s wrist, stopping his hand. “It’s not good enough,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Not good enough for you.”

“No, Foggy, no,” Matt said, shaking his head, his face softening. “Foggy, baby. No. I just, I had this friend once, this friend I loved. I loved his body the way it was, I loved how soft he was. I loved it when he held me.” His voice cracked on the last part. Foggy wanted to say something. He wanted to make a joke about how pudgy he used to be, and how he could eat as many donuts as he wanted now and still look like this. But if he made a sound, the lump in his throat would betray him. He kissed Matt instead.

Matt made a little noise into the kiss. He smoothed his hands up Foggy’s chest again, swiping his thumbs hard over Foggy’s nipples and making Foggy gasp. Then his hands traveled down to undo Foggy’s belt. But he froze, and Foggy tried to figure out why for several drunk seconds, before realizing the wet feeling on his own face.

It was, like most things here, very real. Foggy marveled at the feeling, wondering if the flesh-and-blood tear ducts in his broken old body were similarly leaking fluid, which was then being replicated here – or, if all it took to trigger the virtual-crying was sufficient activity in the emotion circuits in his meat-brain?

Matt’s fingertips reached up and unerringly touched the bottom of one of the drops, followed its trail up to Foggy’s lower eyelid. His touch was a question, but he didn’t use words to ask it, probably too afraid of the answer.

Foggy would give him the answer whether he liked it or not. “I thought you were dead,” he said to Matt. “I thought you died. Decades ago.” He blinked, and more drops fell down his face.

“I did,” Matt said. “In a fashion.”

“Are you even real?” Foggy asked, his voice cracking into a high register.

“Nobody is real here, Foggy,” Matt answered. His maddening literalness, his legal mind, was so achingly familiar that it made Foggy sob.

“I loved you so much,” Foggy said, and Matt wrapped his strong arms around Foggy, tight. “I missed you so much. And you were lost to me. Before you died, even – or disappeared, or whatever it was you did - you were already lost to me.”

“I’m sorry,” Matt whispered.

“What does that mean now?” Foggy said, into Matt’s shoulder. The feel of his tears making the warm skin there wet. He couldn’t even bring himself to say it with anger. It had been too long. All that was in his voice was wonder. “What does it mean now that you’re here? I’m eighty-four years old, Matt.” He laughed, because the number sounded ridiculous, but that was the actual amount of real-time the wetware had been around.

“You don’t sound, feel, or smell a day over twenty-eight,” Matt said in his ear, and Foggy laughed again, wetly. No doubt Matt had accurately sniffed out the age Foggy had typed in for his avatar body, but he’d ratcheted it down some years for flattery purposes.

“What do you want, Foggy?” Matt asked, pulling back a little so Foggy could see his face. Matt’s clouded eyes pointed a little low, around Foggy’s mouth, as they always used to.

“I don’t know what I want,” Foggy said, and he knew they were talking about at least two things. What he wanted right now: did he want to keep making out. What he wanted going forward: did he want avatar-Matt in his life? This creation, this simulation? There might be a living brain behind it, there might not. There might have been a brain that once created this avatar, that directed its fleshy hands to fill out all the questionnaires and sign the forms to make it happen, and that brain might now be gone, while the simulation lived on. Matt was right, in a way, that it didn’t actually make a difference. Foggy would not be able to tell the difference.

Matt kissed Foggy again, and Foggy’s body told him what it wanted, at least right now. Matt sensed it, and ran his hands up Foggy’s thighs, slow and firm. “I want to make things right,” Matt said, low, “if you’ll let me.”

“You can never make things right,” Foggy said.

Matt nodded. “Fair. But I can make you feel good. We can remember old times.” His hands went back to Foggy’s belt, unbuckled it.

“I- I’d like that,” Foggy told him, voice hot. Another great thing about these youthful forms they got to inhabit: All the parts were in good working order. Better working order than they ever had been in their meat-bodies, in fact, even when they were young. Matt’s fingers felt better than any sexy memory Foggy could call up from his real-world past, or from his virtual adventures. His head fell back hard against the wall of the stall. Matt’s hand moved slowly, so teasingly slowly. But suddenly both his hands gripped Foggy by the hips and lifted him off Matt’s lap. Getting up, Matt steered Foggy around to sit on the toilet, and got down on his knees in front of him. Resuming his stroking, his face turned up toward Foggy’s.

“I love you too, Foggy,” Matt whispered. “I always loved you.”

His beautiful mouth engulfed Foggy before Foggy could respond.

\--

Foggy took him back to his place, his virtual apartment. It was stunning and huge and in the middle of the city, because space was an illusion here, anyway, so you could have whatever you wanted. Not that “the city” was anything like real-life New York. If Foggy ever got senile enough to not be able to tell the difference, he would be ready for the clinicians to pull the plug on him.

They made love. Several times. Parts never failed you in this world. It let you pretend you were young. For a little while, they suspended their belief in all that had transpired in the time in between, and they let themselves be young, stupid friends (lovers) again, laughing about stupid things. Then they got too self-conscious about pretending. They tried to keep up the charade, and started to fail at it. They acknowledged this, and tried to laugh about it. Foggy found himself kissing tears off Matt’s face.

Afterward, Foggy put silk sheets on his bed. He had them because he had checked a box on a list of items that would be pre-stocked in the wardrobe, just to torture himself with fond memories. They laid in bed together, Foggy’s back against Matt’s chest, Matt’s arms around him. Foggy counted Matt’s breaths, his ribcage pushing forward and falling back. He knew Matt was following many of his own bodily rhythms besides just his breath.

Neither of them slept. Foggy had no desire to sleep. Sleep meant disconnecting from this world. Foggy would become a body in a bed, an old man hooked up to tubes and wires, in a hospital gown, surrounded by strangers. Matt, maybe the same. Or maybe Matt switched off and ceased to exist, before his consciousness or his simulation thereof was called on again.

Matt’s eyes stayed open; Foggy could feel the lashes blinking against the side of his face. Foggy kept counting his breaths, the breathing pattern of being awake, how it was a little irregular, a little shallow. If Matt’s eyes fluttered closed, if his breathing smoothed out, Foggy had a plan. He would twitch or grunt, or elbow Matt if he had to, to keep him awake. To keep him here.

Foggy had a plan, for now. He’d worry about the rest of it later.

**Author's Note:**

> Juke box song, as I imagined it: Merle Haggard – [I’ve Got A Tender Heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJNp5LGoxQE) \- (The lyrics are very Daredevil) (I know it from the Eleni Mandell cover, which is also worth checking out)
> 
> If country’s not your thang, alternatively my mind went to U2’s With or Without You – kinda the quintessential heartbreak slow dance song for me.


End file.
